60 Years of Scientific Excellence

When the Cancer Research Institute was founded in 1953, we knew then that immune-based treatments would transform cancer medicine. In more than six decades since, we've made numerous groundbreaking discoveries that have given more patients new hope today.

Mitchell H. Gold, M.D.

Founder and Managing Partner
Alpine BioVentures
Seattle, WA

Dr. Mitchell H. Gold has had a lifelong commitment to helping patients with cancer, stemming from the loss of his 26-year old mother to metastatic breast cancer when he was four years old, as well as two grandparents to cancer. These losses served as the catalyst for Dr. Gold’s career in medicine and desire to transform scientific breakthroughs into a reality for patients.

Dr. Gold found the opportunity to achieve that in 2001, when he joined the Seattle-based biotechnology company Dendreon Corporation. As president, CEO, and member of the board of directors, Dr. Gold and his team developed a new class of therapies called active cellular immunotherapy (ACI), specifically designed to engage a patient's own immune system against cancer. Having raised more than $2 billion to fund the clinical development through to global commercialization, Dendreon successfully ushered in an entirely new era in cancer treatment with the approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the world’s first autologous cellular immunotherapy, PROVENGE® (sipuleucel-T), in April 2010. Dr. Gold grew the company from having a market capitalization of $40 million to one of nearly $8 billion at its peak and established Dendreon as one of the largest biotech companies in the world. Today, Dendreon is the foremost leader in cancer immunotherapy with its ACI platform targeting several other tumor types, including bladder, breast, renal, and colorectal cancer. With PROVENGE now available to patients, Dr. Gold left his position as president and CEO in 2012 in order to focus on his passion of discovering and developing innovative scientific therapies for patients with cancer.

Dr. Gold is founder and managing partner of Alpine BioVentures, a privately-held biotech company dedicated to developing the next generation of cancer immunotherapies. He continues to serve on the board of Dendreon, as well as Jennerex Biotherapeutics and the University of Washington/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Prostate Cancer Institute.

Prior to joining Dendreon, Dr. Gold previously served as vice president of business development and vice president of sales and marketing for Data Critical Corporation, a company engaged in wireless transmission of critical healthcare data, now a division of GE Medical. Dr. Gold was the president, CEO, and a co-founder of Elixis Corporation, a medical information systems company.

For his contributions to science and cancer, Dr. Gold was named a runner up to Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos for “Smartest CEO” by Fortune Magazine in their “Smartest People in Tech” issue and was honored with the 2011 Oliver R. Grace Award by the Cancer Research Institute. He was voted “Entrepreneur of the Year” in the Pacific Northwest in 2011 by Ernst and Young, as well as the top influencer in medicine in 2010 by Seattle Magazine. Dendreon was recognized as the most innovative company at the 2010 Washington State Governor’s Life Sciences Summit.

A Chicago native, Dr. Gold graduated from the University of Wisconsin and Rush University Medical School in Chicago and was a urology resident at the University of Washington.